In modem society, communications networks such as the Internet enable vast numbers of people to communicate and obtain access to a limitless variety of information across great distances. The development of the World Wide Web has enabled people with relatively little technical training to find and display information in a multimedia format using a browser device such as a personal computer or television set-top box running a browser program, such as MICROSOFT.RTM. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. As a result, the number of sites and the number of users on the Internet have grown at an ever-increasing rate.
For aid in accessing the Internet, many users subscribe to Internet-access services, such as the WEBTV.RTM. Internet access network. (WEBTV is a registered trademark of WebTV Networks, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.) The WEBTV Internet access network includes a large number of browser devices, referred to as client terminals, and at least one host, or proxy, server. The client terminals are connected to the Internet via conventional modem pools, either by Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) connection, telephone line, or other data link, and can directly access content on web pages established by Internet publishers. The host server communicates with the client terminals to provide a convenient, standardized interface for accessing the Internet. The host server also offers supplemental services, such as email, news reports, television program guides and enhanced access to certain Web pages for subscribers of the service.
As the audience of users of these Internet-access services has grown, so too has the potential of these services to deliver advertising content through the Internet. The Internet thus provides an effective medium by which advertisements or other information may be delivered to users. Publishers of Internet sites typically advertise using pull technology. Pull technology is so-named because a user must request information, or pull it, from a server before the information will be sent to the user's browser device. As the number of advertisers on the Internet increases, advertisers are seeking new and additional methods of delivering advertisements. Examples of known methods include the use of links on web pages to content from the same and other publishers and the use of still and animated banners and audio jingles on web pages.
It is also known to embed hidden advertisement links within a standard hypertext link to a destination Internet site. When a user selects the link, intending to go to the destination page, the user also unwittingly triggers the embedded link and is briefly shown an advertisement before the browser device continues to download the destination page. This type of interstitial advertising requires the user to wait while the browser device downloads and displays the advertisement. Interstitial advertising methods are also known in which advertising information, whether embedded in a web page or cached in the client browser device itself, is presented in response to selection of a hypertext link on a web page (see U.S. Pat No. 5,572,643 to Judson, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference).
One more recent method of providing advertisements to users is to display previously obtained advertisements to users while transitioning between Internet sites. Generally, this involves viewing content from a site and selecting content to be viewed from another site, such as by actuating a link or inputting the IP address or domain name for the selected site. Upon selection of this new site, the publisher of that site must be contacted, the content of that site downloaded and ultimately displayed to the user. The time involved for this transition step may vary from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on the magnitude of the new content, the speed at which the content is downloaded, etc. This transition period provides an opportunity for intermediate content, such as an advertisement, to be displayed to the user. This intermediate content generally is downloaded to the remote terminal, or client, during periods of idle time or periods of nonuse.
Sometimes, however, it is desirable to override or suppress the display of this intermediate or interstitial content. For example, when users transition between content from the same or associated publishers, the publisher or publishers would prefer that a competing publisher's advertisement not be shown to the user during the transition period. Similarly, a publisher may wish to prevent the display of intermediate content while a user is transitioning between a variety of related content sites.